OFFICIAL BLOGHER '10 LIVEBLOG: Creating Tangible Social Change

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MELISSA: Okay, the time has come. The post-lunch food coma, we’re gonna plow through that.

My name is MELISSA SILVERSTEIN, I’m the moderator of this panel, I blog at WomenandHollywood.com. This is a great group to have a conversation about social change and blogging.

Beth is on that end, she’s from Fake Plastic Fish, Gina McCauley from What About Our Daughters and Blogging While Brown, and Stephanie from Blue Star Families. If you want to read their bios, everything is online. We’re going to go right into the conversation.

The first question I put forward to the panel is when you started blogging, did you have any idea that your blog was going to be something that could make change in our culture and what have you learned from that opportunity

BETH: I had absolutely no idea. Back in 2007 I was online and I learned about the problem with plastic in the ocean and I saw a photo of a dead albatross chick that was completely full of plastic bottle caps that I was using in mown life and I thought wow, my actions actually have an impact on creatures I didn’t know existed before that. You know I didn’t know what I could do about global warming but plastic is an issue I can have control over in my own life. I made a blog to keep track of my plastic use, spammed all my friends and family without asking if I could subscribe them, so that was who was reading my blog at first was friends and family. Asked another blogger if he'd link me and he did and that’s how I gained readers.

MEL: Gina McCauley, talk a little bit about social change and blogging.

GINA: I started my blog to be apathetic. I felt guilty about something and I said somebody should start a blog about that and a little voice on my shoulder said you know how to blog. My very first post, What About Our Daughters, I make a list of all the stuff I’m not going to do. I thought I’d do it for 30 days; my parents were my first readers. I was indignant, I felt like I was doing something and looking for someone else I could write a check and then stop. Three months later my blog made the AP Wire. You never know what you’re started. I didn’t know I’d be taking on large corporations.

STEPHANIE: I come from a slightly different perspective. Our blog and online community started from a non-profit. Been blogging since 2006. In 2008 I got together with some other military spouses I know. All the other orgs out there were large and amorphous and over-arching. We wanted to start a non-profit based on changing how our country sees military families. I’m all about social media, so I said wait, we must have a blog, we must have a community. But not much expectation – it turned into something much bigger than we expected. People came to us on our blog and on our Facebook and say what can I do to help. Our lesson is a little bit different – just because something seems overwhelming, you can still do social change in those very basic ways with almost no money.

MEL: Women and Hollywood started because I was sick of not being able to see any movies I wanted to see. I figured I wasn’t the only one so I combined my two passions of women and pop culture. I feel that what I use it for and what other people use it for is to engage their thought process and to understand how they contribute to the market and how their voices are heard and contribute to the market.
So: why is blogging such a great place for social change? How is this medium different than a straight non-profit?

GINA: Blogging is very good for what I like to call open source activism. If you take a lot of people who have the ability to do little things, it can have a massive impact. In fact I think blogging is usually most appropriate for micro-activism. You can put something up that’s a repository for information, your readers can generate their own information. The very first activism I did was a joke. It was me being sarcastic, after the Don Imus thing there was a lot of commentary out of the black community. Hughley went